More than 4 500 electric batteries has been collected in the course of the environmental campaign “Hand over the battery and save the hedgehog!”

In the course of the environmental campaign “Hand over the battery and save the hedgehog”   it was collected 65 kg of waste batteries by residents of Kingisepp city, Leningrad Region.  The Company JSC “EuroChem-Northwest” together with the youth organization “Choice” were the organizers of this environmental campaign.

The batteries contain a variety of different metals – mercury, nickel, cadmium, lead, lithium, manganese, and zinc, which tend to accumulate in living organisms, including the human body and could be a cause of significant harm to health.   Battery which is carelessly thrown in the garbage can goes to landfill, where  it is inflamed during summer time together with another garbage and smoldering (and they will be burned on the waste incineration plant), producing  clouds of smoke  with DIOXINS.  Even the minimum doses of these toxic compounds (their influence is 67 000 times stronger than cyanide impact) could be a cause of cancer and reproductive system disease.

Batteries collection was started on April 25, containers were installed in three supermarkets, JSC “EuroChem-NW” office building and LLC “IG “Phosphorit” workshops. The employees of MW Kingisepp also jointed the batteries collection.

The first campaign took place in autumn last year causing a huge interest and positive reaction of Kingisepp citizens:  3612 batteries have been collected then and almost 1000 more (4548) batteries this year. Summing up the results of two environmental campaigns Kingisepp citizens jointly with JSC “EuroChem-NW” have saved more than 8000 hedgehogs.

Why the campaign declares “Hand over the battery and save the hedgehog”? It has been counted that one electric battery pollutes with the heavy metals about 20 m2 of the land which is the habitat of one hedgehog and several thousands of the earthwarms in the forest area!

All of them have been handed over to a stationary point for hazardous waste in St. Petersburg.

Note:

JSC “EuroChem-North-West” executes a major project for construction of a new high-tech plant for the production of ammonia in Kingisepp.    Investments in amount of  about  1 billion USD were involved  in the new project.  The new ammonia plant will be built on the territory of  industrial site of existing plant  “IG “Phosphorite” producing phosphate fertilizers. n the frame of the project “Ammonia Production, Kingisepp” it is foreseen the construction of an ammonia synthesis unit (NH3), liquid ammonia storage, infrastructure and logistics facilities. I EuroChem Company pays special attention to the procedures of environmental impact assessment (EIA) during planning of large-scale investment projects, including the construction of the ammonia production plant in Kingisepp.  As part of this project  it was carried out environmental impact assessment in accordance with the Equator Principles.  New plant will have a capacity about 2700tons of ammonia per day or 1 mln tons per year.  Launch of a new ammonia production is planned for 2018.